Education
Monday, May 27, 2013
Top Story
5/24/2013
San Diego Union-Tribune
Right now, some California students are sitting for hours pouring over testing booklets and filling in scantron bubbles. The results of that will shape the fate of their teachers, principals, district officials and become the conversation fodder for the education politics of the year to come.
Yet those students’ parents, the real education deciders, and the students themselves receive almost no feedback from their hard work. Why?
Because the California Department of Education delivers the results of the March, April and May test to principals and local school officials in mid-August and last year (after a security breach) officials didn’t get results until mid-September. Parents did not see the schoolwide results until mid-October, well after school started and 6 months after most enrollment
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Features
5/20/2013
National Review Online
School Dollars Should Follow Success, Not Just Enrollment
The decision of the Louisiana supreme court to strike down as unconstitutional the funding mechanism of the state’s school-voucher program is a major blow to school-choice supporters, but the biggest
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5/9/2013
Over the past decade, the United States has spent upwards of $100 billion on K-12 classroom technology to no discernible effect. The reason is clear: most education technology in use in K-12 classrooms
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5/7/2013
Real Clear Policy
Time may be running out for supporters of education vouchers. The very survival of the schools that would benefit most from vouchers is in doubt. Faith-based schools, especially Catholic and Jewish day
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Education Articles
| 12/17/2008 |
Article Detroit News
Your ninth grader comes home from school and drops his bookbag. “Dad, why do white-dominated institutions lower the life expectancy and income of people of color?” he asks.
Concerned, you come to
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| 12/1/2008 |
Article Our Children (The PTA National Magazine)
Many of the most important challenges in American public education can be framed by considering the deeply troubling statistics and trends regarding our high school graduates. For instance, 17 of the
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| 11/24/2008 |
Article The Courier News (Elgin, Ill.)
Earlier this year, Illinois' Diamond Lake School District 76 made headlines for its dramatic improvements in test scores by English Language Learners. However, because District 76's innovative instructional
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| 11/18/2008 |
Presentation Education Policy Briefing by the Lexington Institute and the Illinois Policy Institute
In recent weeks, accolades for the performance of Illinois (and Chicago) students on the state standardized tests have been hard to miss. The day preliminary data for the Illinois Standards Achievement
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| 11/11/2008 |
Research Study
When school boards spend thousands of tax dollars to send teachers to education conferences around the country, they have a reasonable expectation that the attendees will bring back knowledge and skills
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| 11/5/2008 |
The success of metropolitan Chicago’s English learner population could hardly be more crucial to the region’s economic future. What do current trends predict for schools and communities in the coming
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| 10/26/2008 |
Article Richmond Times-Dispatch
A funny thing happened on the way to the election. Answering the last question, during the last debate, candidates John McCain and Barack Obama agreed with each other.
The issue was charter schools.
“Charter
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| 10/24/2008 |
Issue Brief
This week, a spokeswoman for Senator Barack Obama told National Public Radio that the Senator supports the use of portfolios to assess student academic performance in place of current No Child Left Behind
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| 10/17/2008 |
Testimony
My name is Don Soifer, and I am executive vice president of the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank based in Arlington, Virginia.
English learners need to be considered one of our
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| 10/6/2008 |
Issue Brief
It has become common, when discussing education in the No Child Left Behind era, to describe students, often English Language Learners in particular, “filling in bubbles on standardized tests.” Such
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| 9/10/2008 |
Article Education Week
Our best students and our worst students are likely to speak English as a second language.
In California, children from non-English-speaking homes who learn English fluently before they start school
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| 9/10/2008 |
Issue Brief
The past week has been a good one for charter schools. Barack Obama proclaimed his support for this innovative public school model, promising to double funding for the federal Public Charter Schools
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| 9/7/2008 |
Issue Brief
The National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the United States, unveiled a 45-page document calling for a “new federal role” in education at its July convention in Washington, D.C.
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| 9/2/2008 |
Research Study
Bilingual education should be optional, not mandatory. There are states, such as Illinois, that mandate bilingual education.
This paper describes the programs and practices used in Illinois’ Diamond
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| 8/28/2008 |
Issue Brief
What should be expected from the tenure of Randi Weingarten, newly elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teacher union? In her first major address in July
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| 8/21/2008 |
Issue Brief
Senator Barack Obama raised eyebrows last month when he told a Georgia audience not to worry “about whether immigrants can learn English -- they’ll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can
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| 7/31/2008 |
Research Study
Few education research studies have garnered greater attention in education-policy circles than the analyses of programs for language minority students conducted by Virginia Collier and her George Mason
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| 7/18/2008 |
Issue Brief
“A mistake is simply another way of doing things,” suggested Katherine Graham, the emphatic, longtime Washington Post publisher. Not, however, when that mistake threatens harm to others, such as the
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| 7/9/2008 |
Article Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald
On this recent Independence Day weekend, Americans celebrated with picnics, parades, and fireworks, but do we reflect much on the great ideas behind the founding of the nation?
Do today’s children
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| 6/29/2008 |
Article Richmond Times-Dispatch
Thomas Jefferson, a strong proponent of public education in Virginia, believed that every child should “be in reach of a central school”. More than 200 years later, Mr. Jefferson’s vision has been realized,
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| 6/27/2008 |
Issue Brief
In response to a 2007 report revealing rampant problems, a U.S. district judge ruled last month that 100 Chicago public school principals must complete depositions about their schools' bilingual programs.
That
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| 6/20/2008 |
Research Study
Many families with children in special education face unique, expensive, and often frustrating challenges in pursuing appropriate education. Several states have implemented policies to help these families
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| 6/17/2008 |
Issue Brief
The federal Department of Education is finalizing new regulations that clarify, and in some cases redefine, how English learners are included in school accountability systems. Reactions to the proposed
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| 6/17/2008 |
Research Study
Some of the highest-performing students in California public schools are children who knew little English when they started kindergarten but achieved proficiency in elementary school. “English Learners”
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| 6/13/2008 |
Article Roanoke (VA) Times
Universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds entered the political debate in Virginia when Gov. Timothy Kaine began a (so-far-unsuccessful) push for it. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack
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| 6/8/2008 |
Article Los Angeles Daily News
Modern textbooks shy away from presenting a positive picture of Christianity and Judaism as important influences in molding the United States of America.
Thanks to multicultural activism, that caution
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| 5/28/2008 |
Issue Brief
Last week, the Richmond School Board approved its first public charter school – a breakthrough that may eventually benefit Virginia families even beyond its capital city. The Patrick Henry School of
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| 4/18/2008 |
Op Ed La Prensa (San Diego)
(English Translation Below)
Frecuentemente escuchamos la expresión “si quieres que algo se efectúe, pídeselo a una persona ocupada”. Por ejemplo, los niños que comienzan la escuela con muy poco
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| 4/17/2008 |
Article The Leader (Lyndhurst, NJ)
When David Paterson addressed a joint session of New York’s State Legislature the day he took over as governor, school choice supporters were hanging on his every word.
Although the new governor only
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| 4/9/2008 |
Issue Brief
It is often said that if you want something done, ask a busy person. Like, for instance, children who began school with limited or no English language skills, yet who succeed in learning enough to be
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| 4/3/2008 |
Issue Brief
How would a Barack Obama administration’s message of change translate in terms of education leadership? The Presidential candidate has announced in rather specific terms how his approach would bolster
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| 3/19/2008 |
Issue Brief
What could be expected from a Hillary Clinton administration in terms of education leadership? The Democratic candidate has long made education reform a priority, and has brought the subject up regularly
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| 3/11/2008 |
Article Manchester (NH) Union-Leader
As support for universal prekindergarten continues to gain momentum, numerous plans for new federal programs are beginning to receive increased attention.
But would the benefits of such a program justify
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| 3/11/2008 |
Issue Brief
“I want to make sure that children who are coming out of Spanish-speaking households have the opportunity to learn and are not falling behind,” Senator Barack Obama declared last month at a Democratic
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| 3/10/2008 |
Article The New York Times
If the Democratic race is settled at the party’s convention this summer — not unlikely, given Hillary Clinton’s victories over Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas — certain delegate constituencies are going
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| 3/5/2008 |
Research Study
The question of increasing the federal government’s investment in early childhood education and development programs has begun to factor prominently into recent public discussions of educational priorities.
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| 3/4/2008 |
Issue Brief
What education policies could be expected from a potential John McCain administration? Throughout his Congressional career, John McCain has consistently supported making schools accountable to parents
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| 2/11/2008 |
Issue Brief
Schools across Illinois, especially those with large populations of English learners, are suddenly facing more than the usual uncertainty about how their students will fare on standardized tests this
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| 2/5/2008 |
Issue Brief
College tuition continues to skyrocket. Grants and scholarships have not kept pace. Higher education is increasingly being financed by debt. It is no surprise, as families struggle to afford higher
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| 1/27/2008 |
Article Providence Journal
K-12 education cost U.S. taxpayers $536 billion during 2004-05. This figure, 4.3 percent of gross domestic product, is roughly equivalent to the entire sum spent over the last five years on the Iraq
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| 1/11/2008 |
Article Manchester (NH) Union-Leader
In his January 11, 1989 farewell address after eight years as President, Ronald Reagan warned that the teaching of U.S. history could be going into irreversible decline in the nation’s elementary and
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